Team Smash and Grab will be hosting an assault on Gruul's Lair, a 25 man instance in Blade's Edge Mountains, this coming week on Saturday the 31st of March at 1 server time. There is no attunement to gain access to this dungeon but group composition is fairly important for the fight and we may have to seek help from outside the guild to fill open spots.

What follows is a strategy for the first boss fight.

High King Maulgar Event
Maulgar comes with 4 adds. A Priest, Shaman, Mage and Warlock. They each have their own abilities and have to be killed 1 by one.

This is an intense fight in which everyone needs to be able to perform their class abilities perfectly. The fight relies on everyone doing their job.

*High King Maulgar

Tanked by: Warrior, Warrior + Offtank in phase II.
Healers: 4 (You can have 3 if the tank is flasked and
if other healers come to help once their respective adds are dead).

Arcing Smash:
Same as Cleave, hits for 6000 to 12000 dmg on plate.

Whirlwind:
Does 7000 dmg on plate and will probably kill any cloth-wearer on his way. Some bossmods may warn you just a few seconds before he does it but melee DPS should be very cautious here and DPS only for 15 seconds after he finished it.

AOE Fear (after Enrage at 30%):
Short range, will probably only affect people in melee and you should have an offtank waiting in the raid to get him back to his spot after he charges.

Charge (after Enrage at 30%):
Charge a non-feared target, this is where your offtank is useful, bring him back to the tanking spot before he's got time to whirlwind in the middle of your healers.

*Krosh Firehand (Mage) (red ogre):

Tanked by: Mage
Healers: 1

Fire Ward Shield (Spellstealable):
Reduce fire damages, a Mage has to spellsteal this to tank him. A second priest should be ready to heal as a support in case the spellsteal is resisted.

Fireball:
9000 damage, he will cast it every 3~5 seconds, damage is lowered by Fire Ward Shield.

Blastwave:
7000 damage every 10~15 seconds, 20 yards range. This is the reason you keep him at range from the rest of the raid, the mage tanking him doesn't have to be under 20 yards range and won't get damaged by this spell.

Summon Felhound:
60 seconds cooldown. Enslave and taunt Olm with it. You can choose to let him tank if you don't have enough warriors. A warrior is more efficient to tank though. Keep the Felhound alive to dispell the Dark Decay DoT.

Death Coil:
Fear and deals 2000 damage to the main tank, also heals for 4000 HP. This is where the 2nd tank taunts to get aggro.

Dark Decay:
DoT (stacking), 500 dmg every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. Not very threatening but if you've got a felhunter enslaved, use it to dispell it and save your healers some mana.

Prayer of Healing (Interruptable):
AOE Heal + Shield. Heals all his friends for around 33% of their life. He will first cast his shield, and then cast the AOE heal. With the shield up he can't be interrupted. So DPS the shield down fast (4-5 sec) and interrupt immediately. Keep a Curse of Tongues on him.

Setup -----------------------------------

Due to many of the ogres having anti-melee damage (fire nova, AE knock-back, maulgar whirlwind), ranged DPS is more of an asset than melee DPS for this specific fight.

The key to get into this fight is the pull. Everyone needs to stand in the correct position to minimalize the impact of the area-effect abilities.

The typical kill order is Priest, Warlock, Mage, Shaman, and finally Maulgar.

Priest, Warlock and Shaman can all be focus-fired by melee and ranged together, so they go down quickly. The Mage is ranged-only DPS and dies more more slowly.

Positions -----------------------------------

The mage tanking Krosh Firehand should place himself completely to the right and move straight forward. Just in front of Krosh Firehand there's a slight "clip" and that is where you should stand before the pull takes place. Be sure not to move too close to the "clip" or you will aggro the room. A good reference point can be used just before the clip, there is a portion of the wall to your right that makes a "corner" that is a safe reference point stay at when preparing for the pull. When High King Maulgar gets aggroed you shoot any instant-spell you have (fire blast, PoM pyro) at Krosh Firehand and spellsteal his shield immediately afterwards. Positioning Krosh is easy. When you aggro him, he will run to you until he is right next to you, then he will stay at that point and fireball you. Make sure that you position him in the far right corner so the raid does not have to worry about the flame wave ability. This is easily done by running to the corner after a fireblast and just waiting until he gets to you and then blinking to get out of the range of the flame wave.

High King Maulgar gets pulled to the other side of where he's standing. He remains all time of the fight on his position.

As for Olm the Summoner, the warriors and the warlocks run straight to him, but beware of the Blastwave of Krosh Firehand. He should be tanked in the back of the room.

Kiggler the Crazed can be tanked by a combination of two hunters or two warlocks who are siphon life/drain tanking him. Alternatively he can be tanked by a moonkin druid because of the immunity to polymorph.

Blindeye the Seer has to be pulled in the way of the entrance. Warriors and other melee are on the Priest doing damage.

DPS -----------------------------------

#1 - Blindeye the Seer (Priest)
It is important that you have enough damage to make Blindeye the Seer's shield disappear. Have someone giving information when the shield is up and then just burst his shield down. If the shield is down, just interrupt his healing ability. You should only have to deal with two or three shields while damaging him down.

#3 - Kiggler the Crazed (Shaman)
All DPS (melee and ranged) focus fire on Kiggler the Crazed (Shaman).
Carefull, he does some AoE and melee may need some healing.
1-2 free healers should now move to healing the Maulgar tank to ease the healing over there slightly.

#4 Krosh Firehand (Mage)
All ranged DPS concentrates on Krosh Firehand (Mage).
1-2 More healers should join on healing the Maulgar tank. If low on mana, regen now.
While you walk to those two encounters, make sure to avoid Krosh Firehand's Blastwave. Stay calm, be cautious, and bring him down.

#5 - High King Maulgar
After all 4 adds are down, ensure your healers have enough mana. All free healers should recover some mana before entering the fight against High King Maulgar. Same goes for caster-DPS. High King Maulgar hits very hard, but his damage can be mitigated by around 30% if Curse of Weakness is kept up on him by a warlock. Melees don't enter the fight right away, they have to wait until High King Maulgar does his first Whirlwind. When the Whirlwind vanishes you can enter the fight for about 25-35 seconds, then you should move away to prevent his Whirlwind from hitting you!

Spread out in preparation for phase II. Spreading prevents wipes that may occur when Maulgar charges while Whirlwinding. All free tanks spread evenly among the DPS to bring maulgar back under control afte a charge.

#6 - High King Maulgar ENRAGED
At around 30% (some saw him charge at 45%) High King Maulgar starts his random charges and if you're unlucky the whirlwinds wipe the raid. Your tanks have to give everything to bring High King Maulgar back to his position. He isn't untankable, but he is unstable! At this time just DPS him down, it shouldn't take too long. Nobody has to die in this phase, but some unlucky charge while whirlwinding may happen.

Well ... the best laid plans of mice and Anathamon ... turns out Saturday is not going to work after all so we will be pushing this back another week. Which is all for the better to help gear up the respective tanks for the High King's fight.

Gruul's lair is a 25man raid instance for level 70 characters found in Blade's Edge Mountains. It consists of two main fights - High King Maulgar and his council, and Gruul. Kind of like Onyxia's Lair only a little bigger.

High King Maulgar's council is interesting in the fact that his councilors require different tanks than the normal warrior/feral druid/protection pallie. One is tanked by a warlock, another by hunters and the last by a mage. We are trying to gear up a couple members of Smash and Grab (Tetsumis, Mizar, and Vanea) so that they can fulfill these roles and the run can go a little more smoothly.

Do I count as a "member" or did you mean "guild member"? hock:
Oh, and does it have a lock-out time since HW is thinking of trying it next Monday, but right now I doubt we have the numbers... which actually... if IST doesn't have enough either, maybe we could coordinate?

I've been looking for something to verify the reset timer, but I've not actually found anything. My guess would be weekly.

And Thog, stop showing your noobcakeness. Of course you're invited, silly, being one of the key Smashers. As to a coordination with the Harshies, I really have no idea what our turnout will be... I know we have easily enough 70s to fill out the raid, but I'm not certain of the interest, or how many will be around. That's likely something we'll have to just wait and see on Saturday.

Harsh Winter visited Gruul... or more precisely, we visited some ogres and Maulgar and his entourage... and we visited the graveyard spirit... over and over again... last night.

We did not successfully take down Maulgar, and we won't be going back any time soon. It was determined that our MT was severely undergeared. Fully buffed, he had about 13k health. Maulgar would hit for about 12k a pop... sooo....

Additionally, the warlock presented us with pulling issues time and again. His fear and erratic pulling behavior is problematic.

Those are the two main things I think we need to be wary of. I spoke about it more with Mizar last night during the raid.